Employee Onboarding refers to the process of welcoming and equipping new employees in a way that helps in improving overall retention, productivity and growth of the organisation. A sound onboarding process is key to getting hires integrated into his/her position and the organization and accelerate productivity. This directly aids in lowering disengagement and boosting retention creating a workforce that is engaged and committed. Onboarding sets the pace and tone to an employee’s stint in the organization. Hence, much care has to be taken, to handhold and ensure that new employees are assimilated into the organization with a well-oiled onboarding process. As companies grow bigger, it is essential to build a formal, structured and effective onboarding process.
The process of onboarding helps reduce the learning curve, teaching and equipping new employees with behaviours, skills, knowledge and tools that help to perform at a functional and social level. While great care is taken to source, screen and get the perfect fit for a role, the process of employee onboarding often goes in a rush. Teams, deadlines and targets push the employee to quickly get onboard, and often very little care is taken to initiate the employee into his role. The process of transition and initiation is either rushed, or done more by default than design. If the employee is left in the lurch, having to figure it out by himself, disengagement starts right there.
A purposeful onboarding program should be adapted keeping in mind the requirements of each position and should start with an analysis on what is most important from the new hire’s perspective. If you gallop through the program without a long term vision and a good understanding of the role, you are likely to experience decreased productivity and performance on the part of the new hire.
A quality onboarding program will help chart out a smooth transition for the new hire so that they feel at ease in their new roles and surroundings. The way the transition pans out has a direct bearing and impact on the continued employee engagement, retention, performance, satisfaction and morale.
Why is Employee Onboarding so Critical?
- According to a notabe survey, hiring and resource managers whose organizations provide a structured long term onboarding program say the rewards include:
1. Employees are more engaged (49 percent)
2. More employee confidence (46 percent)
3. Employees have greater trust in the organization (45 percent
4. Greater efficiencies (44 percent)
5. Higher productivity and performance (42 percent)
6. Higher morale (38 percent)
7. Lower employee turnover (31 percent)
8. Contributes to meeting revenue targets (21 percent) - According to a survey submitted by MIT Sloan Management Review, in the United States more than 25 percent of the working population experience career transitions every year. This makes onboarding a subject of strategic importance.
- It is estimated that managers transition into new jobs or new roles on an average every 2 to 4 years with approximately 500,000 new managers moving into new roles or companies each year, in just Fortune 500 companies alone. Yet, the success ratio of senior hires from outside the company is 50%, half of them failing within 18 months into the new position.
- According to a study by the Corporate Executive Board nearly 4% of employees quit a new job after the first day. Nearly 20% of employee turnover happens in the first 30 days.
- Studies indicate that it can cost 6 to 9 month’s salary every time an employee is replaced. The costs and numbers involved in employee turnover makes sense only for managers and companies to look into the process of onboarding with more vigour. About 33% of new hires lookout for a new job within 6 months of joining. New hire cost averages around $65,000 and the learning curve to full productivity can take upto 5 months of full employment. It is estimated that even a $8/hour employee can cost around $3,500 in turnover, both direct and indirect.
- Over 50% of Employees who went through a structured onboarding process are likely to stay with the company after 3 years.
Do you need an Employee Onboarding Software?
We provide a list of questions to help you choose whether you need an onboarding software or not.
- Do you prefer your employees to complete new hire forms and tasks electronically instead of paper and spreadsheets?
- Do you want to welcome the new hire with a custom welcome message, share Company’s Vision & Mission, Youtube Videos & clips, share links to website, newsletter and other resources?
- Do you need to maintain close contact with the new hire regularly?
- Do you recruit employees who work at remote locations?
- Do you feel new hires require help in completing Form I-9, W-4 and other State forms to ensure compliance?
- Do you need a digital audit trail of changes made, track pending tasks, safeguard data and analytics reports to measure productivity?
- Do you need a more secure platform to store your data?
Learn more about EMP Trust HR’s Onboarding software?
EMPTrust HR offers a comprehensive employee onboarding solution that can incorporate all of your HR required documents to be fully electronic including Form I-9, Federal, State and City forms, company-specific forms including employee handbook and HR policy sign off with an electronic signature capability. This can be integrated into SAP or other HRIS systems for seamless flow of information. We are also a DHS E-Verify agent with seamless integration to DHS, certified on every version, and one of the largest process of employment eligibility verification with the Department of Homeland Security.The solution provides a completely paperless solution with automation of internal tasks, a branded new hire portal with your branding/logos, custom welcome messages, and video embeds on an easy to use HRIS platform. We support any device including desktops, tablets, and phones with no software to install.
We provide a suite of legally compliant employee onboarding and workforce management solutions. Leveraging a full range of features spanning the complete hiring process, companies can initially deploy engagement portals via the software’s onboarding wizard. Give new hires access to a rich online welcome pack detailing culture, practice, corporate policy, training and more – all customizable to location, department and job role. Go paperless with electronic employment form management and retention while assigning and tracking internal or external tasks associated with the onboarding process. Compliance is supported by Form I-9 and E-Verify services for reducing errors, meeting USCIS requirements and being subject to thorough audit report logs.
EMP Trust HR’s onboarding system is suitable for businesses of all sizes. Key features include forms management, task management, compliance tracking, employee training, benefits administration and employee portals.With the addition of multiple large clients, the solution now supports employee hiring and onboarding across US, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, India, Singapore, Brazil, Germany, France, Netherlands and South Korea with local language forms, an extensive library of new hire paperwork with support in local languages.
Complete all required paperwork, understand HR policies, sign up for benefits, understand all required tasks and view training and orientation schedules. Forms can also be setup to display by each location’s needs with configurable profiles based on employee hire type and can be configured to display instructions. Users can generate I-9 forms electronically, track completion and meet any USCIS requirements with audit reports and logs.
The solution also offers training courses and users can assign employees to specific courses tasks and track completion via the new hire learning portal. Employees and new hires can learn about and compare plans, link to online content and then sign up for benefits.
Hiring manager and HR users benefit from a series of enhancements. They can view an updated snapshot of key tasks, guide new employees & engage employees through the onboarding process with training and HR orientation. Automation of key tasks and provisioning enables companies to automate messages to new hires via SMS and email, track completion and ensure employee productivity and readiness for success from day one.
Some key features of Employee Onboarding Software include:
- SMS Support and Mobile Apps: This popular feature enables HR users to engage and complete onboarding for hourly workers who do not have an email with SMS and native mobile applications to complete all onboarding paperwork. No more missed paperwork. Includes robust tracking and reporting.
- New Hire Onboarding Portal Experience: The updated new hire portal provides visually rich and relevant information through an updated graphical user interface that allows new hires to receive information based on their job, hire type, track tasks and forms for completion. This simplifies and speeds up the onboarding process, allowing candidates to be more productive because they only have to provide relevant information once.
- HR Managers Dashboards: the updated managers dashboards provide relevant tasks, information on each new hire, including form I-9 and E-Verify steps and pending critical compliance tasks.
- Remote Hiring: HR users benefit from tools for remote hiring, including access to remote agent network for form I-9 completion.
- Cross Boarding & High-Volume Hiring: This feature supports high-volume and bulk hiring for large events with automated onboarding tools–including cross boarding due to company mergers and acquisitions–for large groups of employees.
